At some point, the Portland Trail Blazers are going to need a general manager. And if that time is sooner rather than later, well, they are in trouble.

More than four months after the Trail Blazers started their search for a new general manager after firing Rich Cho, after interviews with at least four candidates, the team is restarting the process. They are going back to square one.

A league source said the Blazers have decided against hiring any of the candidates they have interviewed to date and that Blazers president Larry Miller spent Thursday calling them to relay the news they were no longer being considered for the job.

The Blazers have compiled a new list of candidates, with a strong emphasis on people with extensive general manager experience, and will, essentially, restart the search.

That means former Warriors GM Chris Mullin, current Clippers GM Neil Olshey, Thunder executive Troy Weaver and Spurs executive Dennis Lindsey are out of the running.

Reportedly on that new list is current 76ers GM Ed Stefanski and former Hornets GM Jeff Bower.

The problem in getting them remains the Blazers track record — they fired two good and well respected GMs in Kevin Pritchard and Rich Cho within 10 month of each other. In both cases reportedly because they didn’t mesh well enough with owner Paul Allen, not because of how well they did their jobs. Then a four month search that led nowhere. This looks from the outside like a team in front office disarray.

So if you are head hunted for this job, you are going to be hesitant. You’ll want to know what you are really getting yourself into. And you’ll want assurances.

This isn’t the first rodeo for Stefanski and Bower (or others with GM experience) so they will be cautious.

Meanwhile, if the lockout does end soon, interim GM Chad Buchanan will be the man during the free agent frenzy. He will make decisions about whether to use the amnesty provision on Brandon Roy and how to restructure a team with some real talent but who was built to have Roy as a cornerstone.

Then whomever they hire as GM eventually will have to live with Buchanan’s decisions. Although part of the issue may be they are not his decisions, but rather come from above him.

After canning two very well respected general managers — Kevin Pritchard and Rich Cho — the Blazers have decided the guy with the interim tag doesn’t get to keep the job, either. Because we all know that more front office turnover is the most direct path to winning.

Chad Buchanan is the guy doing the GM job now but he is no longer in the running to be the next GM of the team, reports the Oregonian.

In a meeting Friday, Blazers president Larry Miller told Buchanan he is out of the running because Miller and team owner Paul Allen have decided they want to hire someone with GM experience or with extended service time as a “No. 2.” Buchanan, who has been with the Blazers for seven years, has never held a permanent NBA position higher than director of college scouting, a job he has maintained the past four seasons.

Buchanan was the GM through the draft, when he traded away Andre Miller and Rudy Fernandez, brought in Raymond Felton to replace Miller at the point, drafted Duke guard Nolan Smith, and helped extend an $8.8 million qualifying offer to Greg Oden. Extending that qualifying offer was a decision from up the management ladder, that one is not all Buchanan.

So who is going to get the GM job? Good question. All the big names will be hesitant after watching Prichard and Cho get fired just more than a year apart from one another. And after both did good jobs (but apparently talked to the media too much or were getting too much credit or were just not fun for owner Paul Allen to have a beer with or whatever it was that got them canned).

But there are only 30 NBA GM jobs out there, someone will take this one gladly. They just may want to consider renting a home rather than buying.

We told you before that long time coach Rick Adelman has interest in moving into a front office job. On Sunday he expressed interest specifically in doing that for Portland, a team that has fired two respected general managers in 10 months.

“I’d love to talk to them,” says Adelman, fired in April after four seasons as head coach of the Houston Rockets. “I’d be interested in talking to them about any position.”

Adelman pauses, then amends his comments.

“I have no interest in the head coaching job,” he says. “I need to make that clear. They have a really good coach (Nate McMillan). Nate has done a great job….

“I would be more than happy to work with them,” he says. “I’m looking to do something different, with not quite the stress the coaching aspect has. I have an affinity for Portland. Any way I could be involved, I would.”

This is a real long shot, but Adelman is interested. Would Adelman make a good GM? Who knows. But the question in Portland is not the quality of the job he could do but how much does Paul Allen want to hang out with him? That appears to be the main qualification for keeping the Portland job.

Adelman was one of the original Blazers players and was coach of the team in the early 1990s until he was fired in 1994.